Joe Davis: ‘Ad Archaea Ad Astra’ Analyst, Artist, Adventurer

Joe Davis’ Creative Technology Lecture ‘Ad Archaea ad Astra’ will address his study of ancient organisms such as salt crystals and meteorite and how he uses ‘junk’ DNA material to uncover creative opportunities that blend science and art. Joe just got back from Moscow where he shared his transgenic and metalized silks that were inspired by spider webs. He is excited about a newly minted project with the German cultural ministry for the creation of a (his words) “temporary institute for the unification of knowledge”. Joe currently teaches at Harvard.

Joe’s works includes centrifuges, radios, prosthetics, magnetic fields, and genetic material. Davis' teaching positions have been at MIT and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).

Davis' works include the sculpture Earth Sphere, a landmark fog fountain at Kendall Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, near the MIT campus; [1] RuBisCo Stars, a transmission of a message to nearby stars from the Arecibo Observatory radio telescope in Puerto Rico, carried out in November 2009; [2][3] New Age Ruby Falls, a project to create an artificial aurora using a 100,000 watt electron beam fired into the magnetosphere from a NASA space shuttle
(which has not yet been carried out); [4] and Microvenus, a piece of symbolic art involving engineering the genetic code
of a microbe.